The Away Mission From Hell
by Eighty Pound Carrot
Summary: Janeway had been on many wild goose chases in her Starfleet career. But never a domesticated chicken chase.


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Star Trek Voyager: The Away Mission From hell

Part 1: Still Not To Be Confused With Part 2

"Tuvok, ready a photon torpedo and lock the phasers on that enemy vessel! Seven, Harry, meet me in Transporter room Three!" Janeway ordered, then promptly fell over as the starship lurched. "I'm okay!" she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. "If any of you saw _anything_, I'll demote you!"

Tom drummed his fingers on the helm. "Captain… I think that's enough drills for today, don't you? I mean, it's not like we don't have enough hands-on experience."

"Shut up, Tom. That's an order." Janeway left the bridge, walked into her ready room, and demanded that the replicator give her coffee (BLACK, HOT) under threat of mechanical dismemberment. 

It beeped warily. "I'll sic B'Elanna on you," Janeway informed it darkly.

"Meep…" The coffee materialized. 

Thus fortified, she returned to the bridge, wandered up to Tuvok, and started whining about insubordination.

"You could change the bridge crew," Tuvok suggested impassively.

"No." Janeway shook her head. "This way I have all my bases covered."

At the mention of "bases," Tom produced a whiffle ball, Chakotay a mitt, and Harry a bat; all three trundled off toward the holodeck.

"HEY, YOU! YOUNG PEOPLE! GET BACK HERE!" Janeway screamed, chasing them out of the bridge.

Chakotay determined he was not a young people, at least, compared to Janeway; Tom and Harry slunk back to the bridge and proceeded to play catch in a corner.

Janeway sent Vorik after Chakotay and returned to her conversation with Tuvok. "As I was saying," she continued. "As I was saying," she added. "As I was saying…" She looked at Tuvok hopefully. 

"Bases."

"Yes. Bases. I've covered all my bases."

"How so?"

Janeway, having thought this one over carefully many a night, delivered her reply with a note of triumph. "Chakotay is rugged, Harry is cute, and Tom is pretty!" 

Harry looked over at B'Elanna with some alarm, but she just shrugged. It was true; Tom _was_ pretty. She could hardly deny it. 

Harry relaxed, Tom murmured something about how B'Elanna was very pretty and paused the game just long enough to stick another pin in his Vorik voodoo doll. 

"Bases," Chakotay muttered. "Right." He noticed then that Vorik was calmly walking off with second base tucked under his arm.

  


Vorik tossed the base in his Sacrificial Tom Pile; it had to be burned now, for Tom had touched it. 

He then reverently placed a piece of chewing gum that he had pried from the bottom of B'Elanna's boots (how he had managed to get hold of B'Elanna's boot…he decided to keep that a secret) in the holy TOUCHED BY B'ELANNA pile. 

Idly, he torched one of Tom's socks. 

  


"Captain," Harry proclaimed suddenly, and with excessive dramatics. "I've discovered an M-Class planet! We should send down an away team!" 

"Good thinking, Harry. The away team will consist of Tom, myself, B'Elanna, Tuvok, and Chakotay. Harry, the ship is in your hands."

Harry stared at his palms. "Would _Voyager_ fit in his hands?" Seven of Nine voiced, entering the bridge for no apparent reason. 

  


It was a logical question, Seven thought. So why did everyone blink at her in stunned disbelief?

"Seven," Janeway said in a sort of strangled voice. 

"Yes, Captain?"

"Could you go do something…slightly more useful?"

"Like what?"

"Count chickens or something."

"Hmmm," Seven pondered. "Recurring chicken."

Then Chakotay promptly kissed Janeway…

ON THE CHEEK, because she had called him, "rugged." 

She would have written him up for insubordination, but then she remembered that she had already covered that base, so she wracked her brain, and finally ordered him to go get cooking lessons from Neelix. 

"Oops." 

"Commander," Neelix sighed. 

"I think I killed it." Chakotay surveyed the soufflé, which had various electrical components sticking out of it.

  


Belatedly, the entire male population realized that "bases" had raunchy connotations. Belatedly, the male population laughed. 

Crewman Tabor was bored. The captain had been running drills all day, and since no one was really sure what Tabor _did_ on Voyager (he wasn't even sure) he had nothing to do.

Sadly, that did not bode well for the rest of the ship. 

"Ensign," Janeway said, stepping onto the transporter pad, "beam us down to the surface of the possibly hostile planet so that we can endanger ourselves--oops, did I say that out loud?"

"Red-Shirt Ensign?" Chakotay asked over Janeway's high-pitched--and rather irritating--nervous laughter. "Beam us down."

"Who's in charge when you go?" the ensign responded. "…Sir?"

"Harry Kim." 

"Right, sir." 

"I'm serious, Ensign."

Red-Shirt Ensign engaged transport. Then he glanced down at his red shirt. "Oh, damn," he muttered. "I need a different color shirt."

For the first commercial break was rapidly approaching. 

Tuvok found some colored pencils. 

Then put them away because that gag had already been used. 

  


Tom peeked out of a Jefferies Tube. "All clear. They're gone." He and B'Elanna went to meet Harry in the holodeck for whiffle ball. 

"Hey! Where's second base?" 

Vorik ran screaming down the hall, second base--on fire--attached to a stick. 

"Rubber smells bad," Tom muttered, wrinkling his nose. "Hey…wait! Is that my sock?!?!?"  
"Where'd he find a stick?" B'Elanna wondered. 

  


Tabor entered the empty bridge.

"Hey, where're Tom and B'Elanna?" Chakotay asked as they materialized on the planet, much to the distress of some Peruvian-esque monkeys. 

"I dunno. Hey, Tuvok!" 

"Yes, Captain?"

"Where're Tom and B'Elanna?"

"Well…logic dictates that they've hidden out in a Jeffries tube somewhere. So, therefore, they will not be accompanying us on this away mission." 

"Oh." Janeway blinked. "Right."

"Seven? Are you supposed to be here?"

Seven shrugged and offered a chicken. 

Harry crouched at one end of the holodeck. 

Tom was crouched at the other end. 

"Okay," said Harry in his best command voice. "I'm in charge, and I ORDER you to come down from that tree!" 

"It's not a tree," came a not-quite-petulant voice. 

"Fine. I ORDER you to come down from that holographic representation of a tree!" 

"No."

"Did I mention we have you surrounded?"

"Won't."

B'Elanna sighed. "Vorik, get down from there."

"Okay."

The Vulcan shuffled down the tree. At the bottom, Tom beaned him with a holographic representation of a Scope bottle. 

  


"Tuvok, I understand, you are a Vulcan man…" Janeway sang, skipping along merrily in front of the away team.  
Chakotay wanted to strangle something… or someone. He tried to strangle Seven's chicken, but it pecked him. 

Red Shirt Ensign became Tie-Dye-Paint-Stained Ensign, and was currently cowered in a corner. Harry ran by with a spoon, and Vorik was right on his heels. "But that's B'Elanna's spoon!" Vorik screamed. 

"You need THERAPY!!" Harry screamed back. 

"_SPOON_!"

"_THERAPY_!" 

"**_SPOON_**!"   
"**_THERAPY_**!"  
"**_SPOON_**!"  
"**_PROZAC_**!" Harry ordered in unnecessarily large letters. 

Tabor had found a Sharpie. "A masterpiece!" he proclaimed, admiring the Picasso representation scribbled across the view screen. 

"Captain," said Chakotay, "that song occurred in a daydream of the Doctor's. You don't actually _know_ it."  
"PARIS PLEASE FIND A WAY, TO LOAD A HYPOSPRAY!"

Seven plucked her chicken. 

"Vorik, stop drinking the Scope. You tried that before."

"But now it's wintergreen."  
"Wintergreeny fresh," Tom attempted. He considered this. "No."

Vorik growled. 

Tabor determined that if he rerouted enough buttons, he could create a fairly accurate representation of Van Gogh's "Starry Night." 

Oh, boy. Harry was going to be mad. 

A rather large explosion came from the bridge, and Harry materialized in front of the bridge. "If I walked, we'd be in Chapter 6 by now."

He entered the bridge, where a soot-covered Tabor stood, admiring his latest creation: Harry's destroyed Ops console.

"Hi!" Tabor greeted. "It's abstract art!" 

Harry handed Tabor a spoon and bolted. Talk about killing two birds with one stone…

  


Janeway had been on many wild goose chases in her Starfleet career, but never a domesticated chicken case. 

"After it!" commanded Seven. Again. 

"Look," said Chakotay beneath a largish pile of feathers. "Can't we just get her a new chicken and be done with it? Why are we down here, anyway?" 

"SYNAPSES BLAZING!" announced Janeway in three different keys. 

  


A native stared at a chicken. 

The chicken stared back. 

"IT'S ALL ILLO-GI-CAALLLLLLL!" Janeway screeched. 

The native backed away slowly. "Singing chickens, " he muttered, "better give 'em a wide berth."

Seven wrinkled her nose and began to determine the mathematical increments of Janeway's vocal functions. 

Back on Voyager, something exploded. 

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No, we're not dead. We're just really, really lazy. This is "Chapter 1" because there's no real chapters in the original way we wrote this. We just figured you didn't want to plow through sixteen pages at once. Yay. "Ch. 2" will be out as soon as it's typed up. Later!! ~Eighty Pound Carrot. 


End file.
